Everything's Funny To Someone.
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Thursday, June 30, 2005 One of the many reasons why I love the imdb.com From Cary Grant's trivia page: A reporter in search of information wired Grant's agent: "HOW OLD CARY GRANT?" Grant happened to read the message himself, and wired back "OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?" posted by ben | 12:27 PM | (0) comments Tuesday, June 28, 2005 Move Through The Room, Part II So I wrote a little something about this ex-ambulance driver, and his very curious obituary. Apparently, so did everybody else, and now the guy is a Van Gogh. John Galt's employer, a company notorious for underpaying their employees, is now apparently picking up the $4,000 funeral tab for this guy - who was only connected to this stingy employer because they bought out the small ambulance company he did work for. They're also having an ambulance processional from the funeral home to the grave site. They won't, but they should run him there hammer down with sirens and lights. Gotta keep life exciting for the dead, y'know. posted by ben | 11:52 AM | (0) comments Monorail! Monorail! Streetcar? So, after three votes and one denied repeal, the Seattle Monorail might actually hit a roadblock with the Seattle City Council next month due to a number of different issues, the main one today being the city's liability should some construction worker forget to wear his hard hat. In the meantime, they've enthusiastically approved the South Lake Union Streetcar. What does this tell me? When it comes to "mass" transit, the City Council's priority is letting rich biotech workers have easy access to the downtown retail core to do some shopping on their lunch break. posted by ben | 9:11 AM | (0) comments Friday, June 24, 2005 Because She Worked So Hard For It A woman in Kentucky was duped by a radio station promotion into thinking she had won $100,000.00, but instead the grand prize was a 100 Grand candy bar. So, of course, she's suing for the actual cash money. I'm split on this issue. On the one hand, I have little to no sympathy for someone who thinks they deserve one hundred large for listening to a radio station for two hours and is the tenth caller. On the other, deceptive promotional stunts like this are pretty weak, no matter how tasty a 100 Grand candy bar can be, and they're pretty sweet, yo. Luckily for her, the lawsuit is not without merit nor precedence, so she will probably walk away with a hefty payday (har har) - larger than the $5,000 she was initially offered, though probably not as much as $100,000. I'm guessing they settle for 50 grand. Now here's the funny part. According to the article, before she knew what was going on, she promised her three children that they'd have a minivan, a shopping spree, a savings account and a home with a back yard. It is Kentucky after all, but a home? With a back yard? And all those other things? For a hundred grand? Less taxes? Putting her real estate expertise aside, what also makes me chuckle is that she is quoted as saying "nobody would watch and listen for two hours for a candy bar." I'm going to sheepishly raise my hand here and say, "I would." posted by ben | 1:24 PM | (0) comments Buy Your Kid Some HBO And Watch Him Feed Am I the only one who thinks that kids who aren't exposed to large amounts of sex and violence on TV and in the movies grow up to be more socially maladjusted than the rest of us? You have to be desensitised to that stuff to some degree, otherwise how are you going to react when a naked woman on fire attacks you with a butcher knife? If you ask me it's a question of survival. posted by ben | 10:22 AM | (0) comments I Move We Accept No More Motions, Any Seconds? Anybody? The progressive Yelm City Council really impresses me sometimes. posted by ben | 8:25 AM | (0) comments Thursday, June 23, 2005 Don't Have A Mad Cow, Man co-worker 1: Hey Ben, want a hamburger? me: Free burger? Hell, yeah. co-worker 1: Want one, co-worker 2? co-worker 2: No thanks, I don't want to wear adult diapers. co-worker 1: Huh? co-worker 2: I'd rather not become incapacitatedly senile when I get old, if you don't mind. me: Mind? If you were old, sane, and lucid, you'd realize what a f**ked up place the world has become. At least with CJD, you probably won't care. You might even be a little bit happier in your senility. co-worker 2: Happier that you have Mad Cow disease? me: It's the blue pill of the Pepsi generation. posted by ben | 1:13 PM | (0) comments Friday, June 17, 2005 Move Through The Room This obituary in the Times is somewhat unusual. A rather lonely less than ordinary ambulance driver's life pared down to its barest of essentials in a column no bigger than a Teatro ZinZanni ad. You want to feel sorry for the guy except for his co-worker's insistence that he lived life the way he wanted to. But then you come to a paragraph like this: "He was a super great employee," said [his former employer]. "For his own personal life, he had nothing. His only vice was on pay day he'd blow all his money on women." Wha-huh? What kinda guy is this? Some loner who lives above the workplace and has a soft spot for prostitutes? A curious addition to an obituary, but it's not the strangest one I've ever read. Nothing will ever top Gregory Hemingway's posted by ben | 1:59 PM | (0) comments Tuesday, June 14, 2005 It's Good To Be The Bank There's a story in today's P-I about a man named "Smart" who lost $30,000 through check fraud and how his bank has basically shut the vault in his face. You know, little guy takes on big business stuff. Only in this case big business wins because the little guy signed a 73 page checking account agreement stating he wouldn't take the bank to court to get his money back. Far be it from me for making fun of the little guy, but: He didn't read the 73 page agreement? Who doesn't read that? Sucker. Anyway. So this guy thought he was protecting himself by having two different accounts: A normal active checking account from which he would pull funds for checks, debit cards, etc., and another secret account where most of his money would lie in state, acting as a reservoir from which he would transfer funds into his active account. A fairly revolutionary idea, except most people have one of these. They're called savings accounts. So shock of all shocks, an alleged drug using relative broke into this guy's house while he was on vacation, stole some checks that were accidentally printed with the account number of the secret account, and now he's thirty grand in the hole. Tough luck for the guy, but what I found surprising was why he set up this two-account system to "protect" himself in the first place: Smart's mess began last summer, when he found an Internet company had charged his checking account twice for the same $20 bill. He didn't want it happening again, so he agreed to the two-account plan. Which just goes to show it doesn't cost much to lose a lot of money. posted by ben | 8:47 AM | (0) comments Tuesday, June 07, 2005 Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Sha-AAARRGGHHH, MY EYES!!!! I broke my sunglasses this morning as I was walking to work. I can live with that, but it happened in front of my carpool buddy, so all I could do was just say "whoops" and sheepishly shove the shards back into my pocket. As I drove into my parking garage, I took them off and slipped them into my jacket pocket so I wouldn't forget them. I left them in the car yesterday and of course needed them. When I got out of the car and pulled them out of my pocket to put them back on, they were bent in the middle. The seat belt must've gotten to them in the pocket, as they weren't shaped like this on my face. I gently tried to bend them back to normal, and they split in two. I don't have good luck with sunglasses. The last pair I had self destructed while I was still wearing them. We had just sat down in a restaurant and before I knew it my shades just jumped off my nose in pieces. I still don't know what happened. My best guess was that I was in the cross-hairs of an amateur sniper. I never used to have bad sunglass luck. In fact, it all used to be the other way around. I had a pair of cheap $8 John Lennon shades I couldn't get rid of no matter how hard I tried. I left them in a customer's car and they returned. I left them in Oregon and somehow they found their way back to me. I had them so long I couldn't wear them anymore because they were too scratched. Almost three years ago I was in London, and while walking along the Thames near the Tower of London, I threw them into the river. "There, find your way back now!" I yelled. I'll let you know when they return. In the meantime, I gotta go buy new shades. posted by ben | 12:33 PM | (0) comments |
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